Social network activism and the Patriot Act (DRAFT)

DRAFT Work in progress! Feedback welcome!

Final version intended for The Seminal and Pam’s House Blend

The most recent skirmish on the Patriot Act reauthorization battle ended badly for civil liberties. Despite passionate speeches all around in the Senate Judiciary Committee public hearings and classified briefings, in the end, only Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Specter stood up for the Constitution. As Marcy Wheeler says, we got rolled.

The battle’s far from over. Representatives Conyers, Nadler, and Scott have introduced some much stronger Patriot Act reform legislation in the House, and there’s still a potential floor debate the Senate. For civil libertarians to come back from a 14-3 vote against us in the most progressive committee in the Senate, though, we’re clearly going to need to try something different. The Twitter and Facebook activism I discussed in Can Skittles fix the Patriot Act? and the open letter being discussed on the Get FISA Right blog point to one opportunity.

A social network activism campaign involving multiple sites — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Organizing for America, Care2, Change.org — has many advantages. Most importantly, it’s a channel for to reach Millennials and other diverse audiences of people who care a lot about the Patriot Act but are not currently involved with civil liberties activism. This is crucial for broadening and recharging the civil liberties community, both for the Patriot Act battle and longer-terms.

Some the other value of a social network activism campaign:

an opportunity to get beyond the media blackout and provide accurate information to everybody.

easy way for people to let their politicians know their feelings — and recruit their friends in the process.

a powerful narrative: “social networks (the wave of the future, Obama’s strength in 2008, youth) are overwhelmingly in favor of civil liberties. and we’re getting organized.” As we continue to make progress, every political consultand and politician thinking about a primary or general election challenge in 2010 or 2012 will be paying attention.

The people and organizations involved in the fight to fix the Patriot Act have very good presences on the various sites. What we need now is coordination and the ability to generate and combine energy on different networks. I’ve got some recommendations for easy next steps that could pay off quickly near the end of this post.

First, though, I’d like to discuss the diversity aspects in a little more detail.

Facebook, Twitter, and a #diversitywin

Poll from Get FISA Right’s blog, October 2

The Get FISA Right poll above matches well with the trends described in Jessica Vascalero’s Wall Street Journal article The End of the Email Era: social networks are now as important a communication mechanism as email. Millennials in particular are very hard to involve via email. Civil liberties organizations know this, of course, and are doing some excellent work in building up presences. However, action alerts invariably push people towards email- and phone-based feedback to legislators — ignoring social networks.

As the snapshot of retweeting stream at the end of this post is a great illustration of the point Tracy Viselli and I have been hammering away on all year: Twitter is a place to engage with women, people of color, migrant rights groups, and others who are marginalized from other forms of activism.*

I mean really, what activism campaign wouldn’t want to have people like @Hegemommy, @ColinCurtisKS, @desidyke, @dreamact, @votolatino, @ColinCurtisKS, @jjpolitics, and @baratunde advocating our cause to their friends and communities? They’ve all got important battles of their own, of course; but they spend so much of their time on social network sites that it’s very easy for them to tweet or share something and help out when they have a few seconds.

The #1 recommendation from the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy “birds of a feather” session on New Strategies for Fighting FISA and the Patriot Act was to build a broad-based coalition — including students and migrant rights groups amongst others. It was great to see three Arab-American groups among the 23 signers of the civil liberties coalition, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Social network sites provide a unique opportunity to broaden things further.

Next steps

The people and organizations involved in the fight to fix the Patriot Act have very good presences on the various sites. What we need now is coordination and the ability to generate and combine energy on different networks. Here’s some example of next steps that could make a difference:

sharing best practices and make it easy for every 501(c)3 to offer viral “contact your politician via Twitter” and “share this with your friends on Twitter” options to complement their email campaigns — and in the process, reach out to Millennials and others who aren’t yet involved with coalition efforts.

reaching out to bloggers and media via Twitter to call attention to the story and help shape the media narrative

using connections on Twitter and Facebook to circulate the next “coalition letter” to other potential organizational signers

an open letter from Get FISA Right to President Obama, with the ability for people to sign on via petitions on Care2, change.org, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter

consider using 2gov to reach politicians who aren’t on Twitter to complement act.ly petitions

continued weekly organizing calls involving activists, bloggers, and non-partisan organizations. The information we’ve shared and connections we’ve made has been incredibly valuable; let’s continue to build on that as the battle intensifies.

Of course there’s a lot more that can be done as well. And the whole far outweighs the sum of the parts, because this is all complementary to the hard work that dozens of organizations are already putting in. Most of what needs to happen is fairly straightforward; we just need people and organizations to step up to drive the various aspects.

Social media activism has proved very successful for civil liberties (Strange Bedfellows, Get FISA Right) and other causes (Jena, Join the Impact,the DREAM Act, Obama). It seems like it’s worth a try here.

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Comments

I’m in complete agreement with Jon’s thesis—-social network activism is entirely underutilized and increasingly essential for citizen engagement. This is particularly the case for my generation–the Progressive Generation (aka millenials)–yet even some of the most ardent supporters of our cause within progressive media remain hesitant to engage in new forms of media based activism.

I first began working on Get FISA Right due to my recognition that a social networking based campaign is the future for engaging young people. Since then, our arsenal of tools has increased immeasurably, yet the tactics of pillars of the progressive blogosphere have still yet to catch up to this seismic shift.

Why wouldn’t activists do all they can to connect with the most progressive segment of society that also has THE ABSOLUTE MOST FREE TIME AVAILABLE TO COMMIT TO THESE SORT OF CAUSES…

I will never forget my time as a student activist where I was desperately seeking any method possible to make a bigger impact. This is precisely why I am so committed to making it easier for other people like myself to make the absolute most of their time and prove that—like the Greatest Generation before us—we will take opportunity out of crisis and show the world that the ideal of America will be!

Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee made some interesting comments in email. With his permission, here’s an excerpt along with my reply.

Obviously, more and more orgs are using SOME social networks during the Patriot Act debates, many by cross-linking their organization’s FB sites to e.g. the GFR Justice Act site.

Yes, there’s some stuff going on. Some of the highlights so far: Credo does a good job of using Twitter/FB/MySpace to promote their email campaigns with a one-click “share this” button when you’re done; ACLU and EFF have been doing very informative tweets. But nobody’s including social network information in their action alerts; nobody’s got ways of having their members give feedback via social networks. And while Get FISA Right did get links from a couple blogs (which we certainly appreciate), most organizational posts typically don’t have any activism instructions other than “call your senators” and “here’s our web site to send email”.

And many of us are still a bit skeptical of Twitter for the privacy reasons and “how much meaningful can one say in 140 characters” reasons

Yes, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace, are all odious from a privacy perspective. But all the organizations I know of are participating there, realizing that it’s the best way to reach millennials and others.

is basically the same as the form emails that are being sent. And since it’s transparent, the information is visible more broadly than just to the politicians and their staffs: to the press, to potential challengers, to friends of whoever’s saying it.

Obviously I don’t think social network activism is the whole story — in-person events would be another great supplement to what’s happened so far — but it seems to me that it’s so significantly under-utilized so far that it’s one of the few chances for changing the dynamic in the short term.

I completely agree with the power of social networking and how it is really changing the world around us. I think it is especially effect on large scales causes. I would love to come to the point where it would be extremely effective in local campaigns as well but I think we are a little ways off from this.

Meanwhile, on the Progressive Exchange email list, there’s been some discussion of Allyson Kapin’s post Email is Dead? Long Live Email. Here’s an excerpt of my comment:

It’s not that email is dying out. It’s just that it’s no longer the single dominant online communication mechanism. Chat/IM and SMS got to email-like levels several years ago. Social network sites are now up there as well.

From an advocacy side, as Allyson says, you need a multi-channel approach. One of the things I notice, though, is that the attention and resources applied to email frequently far outweigh those going to other media. With the recent Patriot Act activism, I saw “email your Senator” campaigns from ACLU, EFF, CREDO Action and Democrats.com, DownsizeDC, the American Library Association, the Arab American Institute, BORDC, and True Majority.

By contrast, as far as I know, Get FISA Right was the only group trying to use social network sites to contact legislators.

More balanced investment in a multi-channel campaign would lead to substantially better results — especially, especially, especially with Milliennials.

I agree with you, both on the reach and ease of using social networking. What I’m not seeing here is something we discussed on the phone – building community. While all organizations mentioned use social media within their own bailywicks, I’m seeing a fragmentation of purpose, a disconnect between groups. Yes, we all have our own agendas. But aren’t we all part of the bigger picture community as well?

Many leftover 60s activists, non-acting progressive thinkers and people within more targeted groups use social media to promote their pet causes and, let’s face it, even their pets. While we’re a part of our own smaller communities, there seems to be no we’re-in-this-together-look-at-our-bigger-community relationship building. If I have a real problem with the Patriot Act, I probably have a problem with Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, too. How nice it would be to relieve both itches in a single scratch. Big causes move smaller ones, just as smaller ones can grow and spread into bigger picture concerns.

A community of groups, of individuals, connected via social networking can feed and support each other. And isn’t that what social media is about?

Social media offers the mechanisms to do this. Many of don’t have time to dedicate to many different groups. If there were a way to connect causes/activist agendas, so I am given an opportunity to easily, quickly, support the ones I haven’t yet connected with sharing similar concerns…well, I think you can see where I’m going with this.

As an advertising professional, I’m seeing a great let’s jump on the social media bandwagon. It’s cheaper than traditional advertising, offers the potential of more reach and great frequency. What many of these advertisers don’t get is it’s not just about special offers and fans, of reaching more targeted demographics. It’s about building a living, thinking, connecting community of people around a single entity/product -or, in the case of social media activism, cause.

How great would it be, if the activists out-did the pros on this one. It is more than possible, providing we all work to create the online community, not just a following of more targeted demographics. More targeted demographics may give you the list, but its the sense of community that makes people act, makes people feel they have a stake in things.

Sounds to me like you’ve hit a very important button – it’s time to build an online activist community where each feeds and supports each. I can’t think of a better way to get there than using the available social media. Who knows what change it can bring. Who knows what next-generation social media technology and community could arise.

Great points, Doreen. The work Tracy Viselli and I did with #p2 was explicitly focused on a progressive community, and TweetProgress has built on this … a similar approach on the civil liberties side is desperately needed. And as you point out, there’s often an alignment of interests between different communities … how to cross-fertilize?

agreed. how to change the dynamic? also, prog bloggers are starting to cover it; they might once again link to activism. and the “minimal time/effort” of Twitter/FB is ideal for the scraps of time left over from health care.

agreed on the importance of metrics, but there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: without investing in social network campaigns you don’t get results to measure. also most data is interpreted by people who are generatinally biased against socnets. e.g. the Politics Online session on “email as the future of campaigning”, which essentially ignored Obama’s socnet strategy

Here is my beef with the DC people on issues… orgs think about issues like this and legislation like this with respect to a DC strategy. Its always DC.

I had a convo with a guy who was so pissed about coverage he got on an issue he was working so hard to push in the media and he said to me “we got pieces in the WaPo, HuffPo, and the NYTimes, how does this dumbass not get it?!” I said… because its a local paper in effing texas… With a state strategy IN THE STATE or in the district you’re targeting you’ll be successful every time. That’s why every single tea party happened outside of DC first and the DC tea party thing wasn’t as big a deal as the in state ones.

Do the outreach to the in district areas – then if you’re going to integrate a social media strategy that reaches out to youth have it be run by the locals to the locals on those facebook pages. MY guess is, however, that no one has as big a network as the national does. Every state chapter needs to be building the infrastructure at their level within their own states, and they need to have the outreach skills to give tangible tasks to their FB people. “Make XXXX your status for the day” or “Tweet this” or “sign this local petition to target this elected official”

I’ll say – I have good state chapters of the ACLU in both Kansas City and in Oklahoma City and I haven’t heard anything from them on this issue at all, I only hear about it from you. I’m for hire to help people develop these programs tho 🙂

Excellent points, Sarah. State chapters are natural places to coordinate pressure on Congress. And in-person local organizing like the People’s Campaign for the Constitution’s local ordinances could benefit greatly from a social media presence. Unless I missed something, there’s nothing about blogs or social networks in the PCC’s otherwise-excellent toolkit. Add these to the list of opportunities.

And I have no idea if anybody’s got budget, but I’m sure you’d add a lot to any of these online organizing efforts.

Just wanted to say your social media analysis is right on here. Using these tools you’re able to get the support of people that have other issues their working on, because they’re just so darn simple and effective to use.

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